Post on 08-May-2018
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CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
1.0 Introduction
Since Chomsky’s generative linguistics has dealt the grammar of any language as
the result of the interaction of morphology, syntax and semantics, it is possible to consider
generative linguistics as the principal school of thought among others in the field of
linguistics. Generative linguistics focuses on the knowledge of language and language
acquisition (LA) wherein the faculty of language is a cognitive device that can distinguish
human languages from other animal languages.
Generative linguistics has taken its development through different steps or stages. It
started from 1957 when Chomsky published his book Syntactic Structure which focused
mainly on transformational grammar. This is followed by Aspect of Theory of Syntax 1965
which was the basis for Standard Theory which extended later in 1970. In 1981, Chomsky
produced Government and Binding Theory (GB), wherein he introduced the notion of
government and binding within constituents in the same structure, and in 1995, he produced
Minimalist Program, wherein Chomsky focused on minimizing the structural derivation
considering Economic Conditions (EC).
Among these theories there are theories of first language acquisition (FLA) as well
as for second language acquisition (SLA), first language acquisition seems to be innate
biological endowment as stated by (Chomsky, 1981) from which it takes place in normal
natural setting whereas the later, namely, second language acquisition (SLA) seems to be
most problematic from which it requires intensive instruction and exposure under certain
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circumstances, although it takes place under above mentioned circumstances, still learners
face difficulties to master it, there are lots of errors come out when they are performing this
activity (SLA), such errors considered to be phonological in terms of accent, semantic in
terms of misuse of lexical item , morphological in terms of derivation and inflection,
syntactic in terms of structure, and morhpo-syntactic in terms of structural relation among
lexical items in large proposition, thus many researchers attempted to explain the
performance of second language acquisition and tried to focus only on categorization and
identification of most frequent errors in this process that learners face difficulty, thus
analyzing these errors to identify factors or causes of these issues is important for three
seasons as (Pongsiriwet, 2001) stated:
1. According to these errors the teacher will know the progress of his/her learners
2. Provide the basic information to the researchers and teachers as well about how
language is learned and acquired
3. These errors can be regarded as the style that the learners used to learn second
language
He added that, analyzing these errors may give information about the following areas:
1. Contrastive linguistics
2. Improving the description of target language
3. Provide information about general cross linguistics traits issues
4. Linguistics universal
5. Language teaching
And hence errors have significant role in understanding second language acquisition.
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Thus by applying Chomskyan theoretical frameworks one comes across Universal
Grammar (UG) which assumes that human linguistic capacity similarly rests on dedicated
mental structure whose specific details are an innate biological endowment of species
(Chomsky, 1981). He added that grammar is composed of a lexicon and computational
system (CS) with the strong evidence to confirm that our performance is a reflection of our
competence that presents our (PLD) primary linguistic data. And therefore, this study
Morpho-Syntactic Errors of ESL learners’ Written Essays: A Minimalist Approach (MP)
is considered to be in the same sense and for the same reason, by trying to trace out those
conceptions and approaches using the latest version of Principles and Parameters theory
(P&P) that represents in Minimalist Program (MP).
1.1 Statement of the problem
To learn writing in English as Second Language (ESL) is not easy task, learners
need quite enough time to practice how to improve this skill, during their attempt of
improving this skill, they make quite number of mistakes and errors, most of these errors
due to morpho-syntactic rules’ misapplication, so morpho-syntax has been found to be a
fundamental source of writing errors in second language.
Second language learners tend to fine morpho-syntax as very problematic area, so it
seems clear that, they confuse or either ignore morphological and syntactic rules in their
writing, for instance, they write while they studying instead of while they are writing,
students they are facing many problems instead of either students or they are facing
many problems, agriculture is very importance instead of agriculture is very
important,…. etc.
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Since generative linguistics has dealt grammar as the composition of morphology,
syntax and semantics, it would be important for the teachers of ESL to help their learners to
improve grammatical accuracy in writing; in addition learners may not be able to express
well-formed essays.
Because of the above mentioned problems, this study aims to analyze morpho-
syntactic errors on Sudanese university ESL learners’ essays using Minimalist Program as
the researcher’s framework and X-bar theory as analytical tool and attempts to find out
types of these errors, why these considered as errors, factors behind these errors and
establish how does lexical choice affect the structure.
1.2 Objectives of the Study
There are a number of studies which have been published on written texts analysis,
but nearly most of these studies investigated this phenomenon, by categorizing or
classifying errors in terms of gender and frequencies using different theoretical frameworks
and analytical affinities. By applying the Minimalist Program, the latest version of
Principles and Parameters theory (P&P), this study attempts to (1) analyze morpho-
syntactic errors on ESL learners’ essays; (2)why these are considered as errors; (3) and
establish how lexical choice affects the sentential structure.
1.3 Research Questions
As I mentioned above the whole endeavor is an attempt to provide answers to the
central questions arising in the study:
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(1) What are the morpho-syntactic errors in these written essays?
(2) Why these issues are considered as errors?
(3) How does lexical choice affect the whole phrasal structure?
1.4 Scope and Limitation
According to the above objectives, this study presents morpho-syntactic analysis on
errors of Sudanese university ESL learners’ essays by employing Minimalist Program. The
type of essay included in this study is that of the narrative. In particular this study will be
dealing with errors of lexical projection those result from the misapplication of
morphological and syntactic rules.
1.5 Significance of The Study
This study will contribute to the study of ESL in the field of morphological and
syntactic errors that second language learners find difficulties to acquire; this will be done
by using Minimalist Program as the current analytical tool of generative linguistics. In
addition this study will lend a hand for researchers and students as well in the field of
linguistics, in particular, morphology and syntax.
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1.6 Theoretical Background
The Minimalist Program (MP) is the latest version of Principles and Parameters
theory (P&P) from which Chomsky attempted to establish a theory of language’s
acquisition and knowledge, this theory is a progression of the overall Chomsky’s work in
linguistics. (MP) is built upon the assumption of minimizing the theoretical aspects of
Principles and Parameters theory; it assumes that the grammar of any language is
minimally complex, this notion presents grammar from three different levels which are: an
external level which is interpreted by semantic and phonetic components, logical form (LF)
and phonetic form (PF) are internal level represent lexical information, and deep structure
(D-structure), (Cook, 1996), these three levels connected and combined to form well-
formedness structure through single level of representation: surface structure (S-structure),
this will be explained in the following diagram as adopted from (cook, 1996):
[Lexical item]
[D-structure]
[S-structure]
And since (MP) minimizes the grammar of any language, the question that rose up in
earlier Government and Binding theory (GB) was: are these three levels of representation
necessary? (Chomsky, 1995) argued that, since language is a mapping between sounds and
[PF]
Phonetic component
[LF]
Semantic component
Figure 1.1
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meanings there is no necessity for other levels, he stated that the only important is lexicon
which spells out to LF and PF as the following diagram illustrates:
Lexicon
To presents these notions, Chomsky used X-Bar theory which assumes that all sentences
are projections of different lexicons as below:
From which XP is the head or maximal projection of the category X, YP is the specifier of
X, X′ is the intermediate projection of X, X is the minimal projection of X, and ZP is the
optional complement of X. This followed by the assumption that all sentential
representations fall under categories known as grammatical categories, the categories
according to (Radford, 2004b) and (Adger, 2003) bear features, morphological, syntactic,
and phonological features, these categories are:
[LF]
Semantic Component
[LF]
Phonetic Component
XP
YP X′
X ZP
Figure 1.2
Figure 1.3
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Noun (N) Verb (V) Adjective (A) Preposition (P)
[+N, -V] [-N, +V] [+N, +V] [-N, -V]
The categories build up any syntactic structure by the process of Merge and Movement,
thus the grammar outlined above in Minimalist Program as adopted from (Jubilado, 2010)
is summarized as in the following diagram:
Lexicon
Numeration
Computational System
Thus lexicon composes categories via numeration in our mental brain according to
computational system to form out logical form and phonological form.
Logical Form Phonological Form
Figure 1.4
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1.7 Summary
In relation to this study, the researcher has explained and explored the area of
difficulties which make second language acquisition to be considered as problematic in
terms of the acquisition of morphosyntax. The researcher also stated the problem of the
misapplication of morphology’s and syntax’s rules, in addition the researcher provided the
reasons and motivation due to this study and asked the proposed questions to be answered
during this study, and finally the researcher furthermore stated the limitation and
significance and explained preciously the conceptual framework.
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CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.0 An Overview of Second Language Acquisition
Second language acquisition in general is very different from first language, it needs
in most cases to be under instruction in order to be familiar with the processes of different
linguistics’ components (phonetics, phonology, semantics, morphology, and syntax);
whereas first language is innate biological endowment (Chomsky, 1981).
Ellis 1995 observed that the process of second language acquisition is complex task,
including different interrelated factors; it indicates the learning of new language after
acquiring first language. There are different factors relating to the learner in one hand and
the learning situation in another hand. Second language acquisition is not expectable, there
is no definite way for learner to follow when learning second language, different learners
learn in different situations, it means that the learner has to acquire all different aspects of
the language, with regard to the acquisition of morpho-syntax, there have been few related
studies in this field, and the focus has been on syntax and morphology separately and how
learners acquire lexis not morpho-syntax as unite form of grammar of any language.
According to Lydia 2010 the interfaces between linguistic system and grammar
external components should be considered in second language acquisition, these interfaces
are for example: syntax/discourse, syntax/semantics, syntax/morphology, or
morphology/phonology, moreover these interfaces should not be decomposed, thus second
language learners find difficulties in integrating linguistic phenomena related to certain
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interfaces. Moreover, she proposes that it must be highly recommended to take into
account the assumption that:
1. All above mentioned interfaces are equally problematic or unproblematic for second
language learners to master.
2. External interfaces provide the main point of second language deficiency to the learners.
3. All different linguistic properties relating to same interface will behave the same.
In addition she added that, the term interface does not mean the level of
representation or the locus of mapping between the levels of representation as understood
by some linguists, but the term interface as in Chomsky’s work (1995) means conceptual
logical form (LF) and perceptual phonetic form (PF), these forms have the function of
interfacing with the cognitive system external to the grammar or (conceptual- intentional
system (meaning)) and the articulatory- perceptual system (sound), thus second language
learners find difficulties in mapping different linguistic levels of representation for
example: the syntax of a sentence should be mapped onto its semantics and that is
syntax/semantics interface; the syntax of a sentence should be mapped onto the phonology
and hence the syntax/phonology interface and so on, and therefore it’s evidence that second
language learner should acquire these interfaces or appropriate mapping ( different levels of
representation).
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2.1 An Overview of Morpho-syntactic Features
Since all sentential propositions build upon words (lexicons) that have certain
morphological forms which due to the agreement relation. This relation connected purely to
morphological properties such as whether word ends in (-s) or not in (1), or (-d, ed) or not
in (2) as in the examples below:
1. (a). The boy plays foot ball.
(b). The boys play foot ball.
(c). ٭The boy play foot ball.
(d). ٭The boys plays foot ball.
2. (a). The teacher walked quickly.
(b). The teacher wrote on the board.
(c). ٭The teacher writed on the board.
From the examples above, it would be erroneous if we assumed that verb in present
tense ends in an –s as in (1a), because it takes another shape as in (1b); and consequently if
we assumed that verb in past tense ends in an –d or –ed as in (2a), because it takes another
shape as in (2b). So these shapes of words are both morphological and phonological
properties, these properties are exhibiting agreement relationship in different ways, so these
properties are commonly called morpho-syntactic features.
A morpho-syntactic feature is the property of the word that determines its shape in
any syntactic representation, (Adger, 2002). Given this statement the researcher could
conclude that, feature is the core element of any language that relate phonetic form (PF)
sounds with logical form (LF) meanings. To make this clear let us refer to the examples in
(1) which state agreement relationship clearly in term of number (singular subject takes
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singular verb, and plural subject takes plural verb), so in English, nouns and verbs have the
following features in term of Number:
3. [+singular, -plural]
[-singular, +plural]
So features will tell us for example in (1) which boy we are talking about, that is to
say one boy or more than one, in this sense; features effect the semantic interpretation are
to say interpretable features whereas the opposite is uniterpretable features. Thus
phonologically we pronounce the words in particular morphological forms, then these
forms relate to each other in syntactic representation. However English exhibits features
that relate to functional grammatical categories such as tense and major lexical categories
which is considered to be the core of syntactic interpretation, these major categories are
listed bellow with the feature that each one bears:
4. (a). noun [+N, -V]
(b). verb [-N, +V]
(c). adjective [+N, +V]
(d). preposition [-N, -V]
In addition, the case arguments or NPs such as [nominative, accusative, or obligatory],
person such as [first, second, or third], gender such as [masc, fem], and other verbal
morpho-syntax features such as [finitive, infinitive] are necessary in building up syntactic
proposition. Morpho-syntactic features can be summarized in the following table as
adopted from (Adger, 2002):
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Type of feature features
tense [past], [present]
number [singular], [plural
person [first], [second], [third]
gender [masc], [fem]
case [nominative], [accusative], [obligatory]
category [N], [V], [P], [A]
others [infinitive], [participle]
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2.2 Review of Related Literature
Aside from the major theoretical books, studies on morhpo-syntactic errors analysis
have been published and most of them focused on categorization and classification of
morpho-syntactic errors in the domain of frequency and gender using different theoretical
frameworks. So studies on morpho-syntactic errors analysis from the perspective views of
Generative Linguistics are important in making this study, which presents the
morphological and syntactic analysis of errors found in ESL learners’ narrative essays,
namely, Analyzing Morpho-syntactic Errors on ESL learners’ Narrative Essays.
Hamin & Mutafa 2010 explored morpho-syntactic errors, wherein they tried to
identify morpho-syntactic errors of ESL learners’ written compositions in term of subject-
verb agreement, the subject of their study comprises of 20 postgraduate students, they
presented and categorized these issues into five major types; these categories are:
1. Subject-verb agreement in person
2. Subject-verb agreement in number
3. Subject-verb agreement in coordinated subject
4. Subject-verb agreement in indefinite expression of amount
5. And subject-verb agreement in notional agreement and proximity
Their results revealed that, the most frequent errors relate to this part of morpho-syntactic
study were occurred in subject-verb agreement of number followed by subject-verb
agreement of person. However this recent study will analyze these errors, and provide
evidences to why these are considered as errors, in addition subject-verb agreement will be
dealt as the syntactic representation built up from different morphological forms of lexis,
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that bear different features which exhibit syntactic relationship of agreement or
disagreement using X-bar theory that represents in Phrase Structure’s Rules.
Pongsiriwet 2001 in her dissertation investigated the frequent type of grammatical
errors in EFL students, most of these errors appeared to relate with misapplication of
morpho-syntactic rules of their L2. Pongsiriwet presented these errors into 12 groups, these
are: noun, pronoun, tense, article, preposition, word form, verb formation, verb omission,
subject omission, extraneous subject, subject-verb agreement, and fragment. She also
attempted to investigate whether there is a relationship between scores on grammatical
accuracy and the main two aspects (cohesion and coherent) of discourse features in writing;
in addition she established the effect of grammatical accuracy and discourse on the
evaluation of writing quality.
However this study categorizes but not the frequent type of these errors, it attempts
to justify the ungrammaticality of phrases and sentences in these narrative essays, the
justification will be according to the theoretical framework that the researcher uses in this
study which is Generative Morphosyntax or Minimalist Program that adopted by Chomsky
(1957-up now), aside from this discourse is not a part of this study which analyze morpho-
syntactic errors at the level of phrase and sentence as well.
Junghanns 2008 tried to clarify the interaction between the lexicon which is
(semantics/morphology) and syntax in Slavic languages, this interaction yields to well-
formed linguistic expression. In other word, aforementioned interaction will be referred to
it as morpho-syntactic features valuation, because he tried to say that the lexicon semantic
undergoes different morphological processes in our metal brain, these processes due to
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come up with syntactic structure, then spell out in both phonetic form (PF) or sound and
logical form (LF) or meaning. This will be explained as in the following:
Lexicon
Morphological Processes
Syntactic structure
Logical Form
Phonetic Form
In addition he explained the role of argument as lexical information of predicate and how
lexical information of this predicate affect the sentential structure (syntactic structure), this
will be a part of this study which deals with syntax at the clause level. In addition this study
extents to include phrase structure as well, aside from above mentioned the current study
will be dealing with different lexical such as noun, preposition adjective and so on, this to
establish how these lexicon affect the phrasal and sentential structure when analyzing
morphological and syntactic errors.
Harganto 2007 in his study attempted to analyze these morpho-syntactic errors
produced by ESL learners. Furthermore he explained the possible causes that stand behind
these errors in second language or foreign language writing. He found that these
grammatical errors can be classified in term of morpho-syntax into: (1) misuse of verb
groups, (2) violation in subject-verb agreement, (3) misuse of articles, (4) misuse of
prepositions, (5) errors of pluralization, (6) misuse of pronouns, (7) and misuse of
conjunctions. Finally he reported that; the possible causes of these morpho-syntactic errors
found to be: (a) overgeneralization (b) and interference. So classification or categorization
it’s a part of this study and it will extend to justify by providing persuasive evidences
according to minimal views of lexical projection and establish how Minimalist Program
presented in X-bar theory will analyze morpho-syntactically these errors.
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Estela 2006 analyzed non-native speakers’ text to determine lexical, morphological
and syntactic fluency, accuracy and complexity. In addition she compared two groups of
advanced and non-advanced level to find the frequency of ungrammaticality in their texts.
She found that advanced learners make more frequent and variant ungrammatical phrases
or sentences; she analyzed these errors in terms of syntax, morphology and lexical features
of ESL academic text produced by non-native speakers.
In her results she categorized these grammatical errors into lexical, morphological
and syntactic, more preciously she included any single word whether content or functional
word to lexical item presented in our mental lexicon or brain, she added that word
substitution, meaning approximation, word omission and word insertion were to be
considered and categorized as lexical errors. Consequently the omission, substitution or
incorrect insertion of derivational and inflectional morphemes were categorized and
considered as morphological errors, and finally she explained that erroneous forms like
agreement, anaphora, word/constituent order, the omission or insertion of multi-word
phrase or copulative verb, the omission of the subject noun or pronoun, the omission of the
verbs and inconsistent consequence of tense were considered as syntactic errors.
However the current study will be dealing with lexicon as the part that projects into
the larger unit forming syntactic projection (phrases or sentences), so the process of this
projection has to be according to the grammar of a language which allows limited
derivational or inflectional rules at the morphological level. In addition, syntactic rules have
to be considered, thus the process of projection will be the central focus of this study and
not the lexicon only, because it’s plausible to say that the omission, insertion and
substitution of morphemes/words can be considered as morphological errors. Aside from
the above mentioned this study will deal with issues such as the omission of a subject (noun
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or pronoun), the omission of a verb or any lexical item at phrasal or sentential level can be
seen as syntactic errors which due to the lack of syntactic knowledge of a particular
language and consequently these errors can be viewed as the projection errors.
Padrosa 2010 established the study of specific type of word- formation
(compounding) and its relation to morphology and syntax interaction, she also tried to
established the ultimate understanding of word-formation namely compounding, aside from
this, she explored the different aspects of compounding, in her dissertation she first
presented some evidence for possibility of theory of language (grammar) from which the
two words; syntax and phrasal syntax are two different fields within syntactic field as
generation of compounds within word morphology/syntax. The morphological aspects were
based on (Akema & Neeleman ,2004); morpho-syntactic competition theory was explored
and then tested using English and Romance language (Catalan & Spanish) examples.
Furthermore syntactic analysis of compound-word was based on distributed morphology.
Secondly she established the appearance of heads in morphology then showed their
role in classification of these compound word-formation, then she examined the nature of
compounding elements in English and Catalan; this was followed by a brief overview of
compound classification, she followed in her classification (Bisetto & Scalise, 2005), this
framework proposes that there are three type of macro-compound these are subordinate,
attributive and coordinate these are further subdivided into another types. Overall, this
study although the title appears to deal morphology and syntax as integrative components
of the language, it deals with syntax and morphology separately. However in the current
study as morpho-syntactic analysis, morphology and syntax will be dealing as the
component that complete each other, this comes from the fact that morphology is
something that has a big deal with word formation and these words when project further to
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form syntactic projection that is to say phrase or sentence, and this projection build upon
morpho-syntactic features of those words used in the projection, so word-formation itself
within a large unit (phrase/sentence) is depend on the syntax of the language which allow
or does not word-formation.
Embikck & Noyer 2005 explored that; distributed morphology can be seen as
syntactic operation (merge-movement) within complex word formation object, because the
lexicon employs some derivational and inflectional process to form complex object that can
be presented syntactically as the word (dislike) in the following diagram:
V
Thus they assumed that the architecture of grammar in distributed morphology is:
The grammar
Syntactic derivation
(merge, movement)
(spell out)
Phonological form Logical form
Verb (like) Prefix (dis)
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
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However this study considers the lexicon as the base component of all derivational and
inflectional operations (merge and movement) (Cook & Newson, 1996), then either
syntactic or morphological operation builds up from the lexicon (lexical projection), so the
architecture of this building depends on the assumption that the grammar of the language
builds from the lexicon or metal brain, the lexicon within computational system (CS) has to
determine the shape and the form to be appeared according to its morpho-syntactic features,
this will be through morphological rules and passes up to syntactic projection when spell
out in both phonetic form and logical form as in the following figure:
The grammar of language =
Lexicon
Morphological processes
(derivation, inflection)
Syntactic representation
Spell out
Abe 2007 investigated grammatical errors, wherein she wanted to focus on the
different types of errors in second language’s proficiency levels, she attempted to explain
how these errors may characterize each developmental stage; moreover she attempted to
find out answers to the following questions:
Phonetic form PF (sound) Logical form LF (meaning)
Figure 2.3
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(1) Are there any differences in rates of parts-of-speech accuracy between spoken and
written form in second language performance?
(2) What differences can be seen in terms noun-and-verb related issues in different
performance skills?
Her results showed that the accuracy rates for preposition related to verb had the
highest tendency in both performance skills (spoken and written), the accuracy rate for
article had a significant tendency in both skills, and the overall rates for pronouns,
adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs had consistently high accuracy rates at all proficiency
levels. In addition errors related to noun-verb were considered; because this is a
fundamental issue in sentences construction, thus the results showed that errors relate to
noun-verb were categorized as: tense, lexical errors, case, agreement, inflection, and word
formation.
Jehsuhana 2010 examined lexical errors, wherein she examined the lexical errors in
written forms of fifty-forth year students at different Thai universities, all these students
were majoring in English both in faculty of education and faculty of humanities and social
sciences. The central goal of her study was to (1) investigate those types of lexical errors
produced by those Thai universities’ students, and (2) to explain what factors stand behind
these errors in terms of interlingual and intraligual errors. Furthermore, she categorized
those lexical errors in terms of interlingual and intralingual into 13 subcategories, 3 for
interlingual which are: (1) direct translation (2) misordering, and (3) use of native words,
intralingual issues were categorized into 10 subcategories, these subcategories are: (1)
confusion of sense relation, (2) collocational issues, (3) distortion, (4) omissions, (5)
additions, (6) confusion of derivatives, (7) redundancy, (8) paraphrasing, (9) confusables,
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and (10) confusion of binary terms. The implication of her results showed that; mother
tongue has significant role in producing such errors, this; aside from the main tow causes
(interlingual and intralingual) that have been mentioned above.
However in the current study, lexical errors will be analyzed as integrated units
within syntactic projection which includes morpho-syntactic features, and to do so, the
researcher will not look at the lexicon separately out of syntax.
Overall it seems that all the studies mentioned here tended to study morpho-
syntactic errors in terms of classification of errors according to gender and frequency using
very traditional theoretical frameworks such as (Corder (Error taxonomy, 1976)), such
frameworks and theories were not able to justify these errors and provide philosophical
evidences to why they considered these as erroneous. Thus the needs arising up toward new
approaches and theories that capable to justify such errors, so by applying minimalist
program as analytical tool this study traces the concepts and processes of generative
linguistics in analyzing morpho-syntactic errors on ESL learnes’ narrative essays.
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2.3 Summary
This chapter presented the overall review of second language acquisition in terms of
morphosyntax and explained how these two components interface each other in well-
formedness grammatical sentences. The researcher attempted to overview morpho-syntactic
features of lexical items in English language. This to give the reader a clear picture of what
it means by morphosyntax; in addition the previous related studies have been reviewed to
look at the similarities and what makes this study different in terms of analysis process and
theoretical framework.
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CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH DESIGN
3.0 Introduction
With regard to the findings from different literatures that have been reviewed in
previous chapter, a number of features is demanded more focus in ESL advanced writing to
satisfy morphosyntax acquisition, as previous chapter showed, all learners included in the
reviewed studies, seem to had deficit in linguistics discourse, although they were able to
satisfy high level as undergraduates, some of morpho-syntactic errors were indentified in
the performance of these advanced ESL writings include: agreement features, inflectional
morphology, categorical features, verbal morphosyntax, projection of TP, and word choice.
Considering that all these range of problems in second language writing are so wide,
some studies tried to define advanced writing in ESL based on some standard writing test
(TOFEL, IELTS,…) on the hand and on the length of staying in English-speaking countries
on other hand, the need will be in refining some definitions and looking at the results of
researches in ESL writing.
To answer the research questions, the researcher will analyze these narrative essays
that were collected from Sudanese university students, the analyzing process will be
according to Minimalist Program as the researcher’s theoretical framework, this will be
done by applying X-bar theory represented in phrase structure’s rules or tree diagram.
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3.1 The Subject of The Study:
The subject of this study consists of 36 fourth-year university students from
Omdurman Islamic University. These students are majoring in English language from
faculty of education, the students comprised of 15 males and 21 females whose ages ranged
from 20-24 years old, all the students have studied English language as compulsory paper
in their primary and secondary levels for 6 years, all of them have been admitted to the
English language department based on their scores in Sudanese National Certificate
Examinations.
After their enrollment in the English language department they had attended four courses
related to writing, namely; creative writing in first year, the principles of writing
composition in second year, styles and usage in third year, and advanced essay writing in
the final year.
3.2 Instrument
The researcher, in order to conduct this study has adapted only one instrument that
was students’ written essays.
3.2.1 The Written Essays
There is one set of written essay consisted of three topics. The topics are narrative in
nature and familiar to the learners, because they can use their personal experiences,
attitudes, and impressions in their writing.
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The analysis of these essays has employed in this study, because it is an effective
approach to examine the language performance. In addition it’s an effective method to
collect quite a number of corpuses of written English in very limited time and with fewer
costs. However the quality of writing in these essays such as (content, style, punctuations,
and etc) does not included in the scope of this study. The researcher selected three different
essays (one for each topic) as samples of learners’ written work; they are illustrated in the
appendices I, II, and III.
3.3 Data Collection:
To collect the data for this study, the researcher followed several steps, these started
by obtaining permission from the dean of the faculty of education and the head department
of English language at Omdurman Islamic University to conduct this study, this followed
by informing the lecturer of writing course; namely “Advanced Essay Writing” the purpose
of the study, and finally discussions were held to explain the methods and details of the
study tools.
3.3.1 The Written Essays
Copies of examination papers were obtained directly from the examination
authorities at faculty of education in Omdurman Islamic University during examinations
period, this part of the exam was consist of one question from which the teacher of writing
course asked the students to write narrative essay choosing one of the following topics:
1. Sudan is agricultural country
2. International musician
28
3. The pressure of being student
The length of essays was not determined.
3.4 Data Analysis
After the researcher collected the data, the data were analyzed qualitatively according to
their morpho-syntactic errors. The coding schema was used in this study is the minimalist
approach which labels the errors according to their morphosyntactic features as the
following chapter codes.
3.4.1 The Written Essays
The data of this recent study have been analyzed according to the Minimalist
Program that proposed by (Chomsky, 1995), this was done by applying the X-bar theory as
the analytical tool, the researcher followed the following procedure for analyzing morpho-
syntactic errors:
I. Identify and categorize the morhpo-syntactic errors in these essays
II. Justify and provide evidences and explicate why these were considered as
issues in language acquisition
III. Establish how lexical choice affects the sentential structure.
29
3.5 Summary
This chapter presented information about the subject of the study,
instruments used to conduct this study, data collection procedures, and how the data
will be analyzed (quantitative, qualitative or mixed mode). Next chapter will present
the complete analysis of data and will attempt to provide answers to the proposed
questions.
30
CHAPTER FOUR
RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
4.0 Introduction
This chapter presents the results of morpho-syntactic errors’ categorization of ESL
learners’ essays, justification by providing evidences of why these are considered as errors,
and establishes how lexical choice affects the sentential structure. The process of
categorization and justification will be done collectively in section one, discussion of how
the of lexical choice effect the sentential structure will be in section two.
4.1 Section One: Categorization And Justification
4.1.1 Errors of Agreement Features, these consist of:
4.1.1.1 Subject-verb Agreement
4.1.1.1. a. Number-agreement
4.1.1.1. b. Person-agreement
4.1.1.2 Tense Agreement
4.1.1.2.1 Omission/Misuse of Inflectional Morphology that consists of:
4.1.1.2.1. a. Omission/Misuse of tense marker on verb
4.1.1.2.1. b. Omission/Misuse of auxiliary
4.1.1.2.1. c. Misuse of verb form
4.1.1.3 Errors of Categorical Features which consists of:
31
4.1.1.3. a. Misuse of prepositions
4.1.1.3. b. Misuse of adjectives
4.1.1.3. c. Misuse of determiners
4.1.1.4 Verbal Morphosyntax of infinitive
4.1.1.5 Projection Errors of TP that consists of:
4.1.1.5. a. Omission of subject
4.1.1.5. b. Double subject
The following sub-section will provide examples for each type of aforementioned errors,
which due to ignorance or misapplication of morpho-syntactic rules of target language
(English for this study).
4.1.1 Errors of Agreement Features:
These errors are the result of the violation of morpho-syntactic features or (the properties
of words that encompasses morphological and syntactic rules when represented in larger
syntactic structure (Radford. 2009b)); these agreement features’ violation consist of the
following sub-issues
4.1.1.1 Subject-verb Agreement, this agreement violation appears in the following
examples:
4.1.1.1. a. Subject-Verb Agreement in Number
USudan haveU this problem٭ (1)
The Blue Nile UcomeU from Ethiopia and٭(2) U run U through Sudan
32
Sudan Udo notU have enough experience in agriculture٭ (3)
Sudan UhaveU many agricultural projects٭ (4)
From the examples given it’s obvious that the learners find difficulty in applying those
morpho-syntactic rules especially those which are related to subject verb agreement in
number, thus in examples (1), and (4) they used erroneous form of the verb (have),
moreover in (2) and (3) they misused the verbs (come, run, and do) respectively.
As the researcher mentioned in previous chapter; that morpho-syntactic features are
those properties of lexical items which determine the shape and position of lexical items
within large syntactic representation, and since features have the power to determine the
shape and position of lexical items; they are a core of languages that relate sounds and
meanings of any lexical item (Adger, 2002), regarding this statement as the central focus of
morpho-syntactic features, the sentences (1 &4) considered to violate these properties and
features, when the learners used (Sudan as the subject) with plural verb form (have). And
because the subject (Sudan) has the feature of being [+singular, -plural] this feature forces
it to take only singular form of the verb that has [+singular, -plural] to satisfy the
agreement relationship, thus the correct proposition will be (Sudan has). The following
figure will illustrate this.
33
From the above structure of two sentences in (1 & 4) it clear that; since the subject has
[+Singular, -plural] feature, the verb has to satisfy this feature and agrees with its subject.
So in this structure both (NP) the subject and the feature of agreement under the head (T)
hold [+singular feature] forming grammatical structure of these sentences, (1) Sudan has
this problem and (4) Sudan has many agricultural projects.
However; in (2 & 3) singular subjects with plural forms verb were used as showed in the
following:
Blue Nile UcomeU from Ethiopia andU run٭ (2) U through Sudan
Sudan UdoU not enough experience in agriculture٭ (3)
In these two examples, features’ violation is extremely appeared, because the subject in
both sentences has [+singular, -plural in number] feature that requires the verb to bear
same feature under tense agreement in the position under (T) in the structure, the following
tree diagram will explain that:
Figure 4.1
34
And therefore as the above structure showed the features of NP, the verb should uniform
with this features and take (-s) as in the figure under T to form grammatical proposition as:
(2) The Blue Nile comes from Ethiopia, and runs through Sudan (3) Sudan does not have
enough experience in agriculture
4.1.1.1. b. Subject-verb Agreement in Person
because it UhaveU everything٭ (5)
it UgiveU us food, Ukeep٭ (6) U us, and UmakeU us very well
she UhaveU many pictures all over the world٭ (7)
It UhaveU this problem٭ (8)
Some of them٭ (9) U lives U in their farms
Since the subject in all these sentences in (5-8) carries the feature of being [+Singular, -
plural in Number], and [-First, -Second, and +Third in Person] it’s plausible to construct
the following structure that would be possible to apply for all these sentences.
Figure 4.2
35
Taking this as the template, the above mentioned sentences would have the following
grammatical forms: (5). because it has everything, (6). because it gives us food, keeps us,
and makes us very well, (7). she has many pictures all over the world, and (8). It has this
problem
However (9) has different structure because of the different feature it employs, so it has the
structure as follow:
Figure 4.3
Figure 4.4
36
Thus the grammatical form of the sentences in (9) would be: some of them live in their
farms. As showed in the structure above, because the feature of plural subject forced the
verb to satisfy and choice singular form.
4.1.1.2 Tense Agreement:
4.1.1.2.1 Omission/Misuse of Inflectional Morphology:
Although tenses are required, to achieve the ultimate access to the grammar of any
language, regardless of first or second language, most of L1 and L2 learners find tense to be
most problematic with compared to semantics, and since what we sound reflects our mental
brain or lexicon (Chomsky, 1957), it is highly recommended for the teachers and learners
as well to give extensive practice to the grammar of target language. So second language
acquisition is not an easy task for learners to master, the learners face lots of deficits during
this period and commit errors. In this recent study the results show errors of misapplication
of tense agreement on verb as in the following examples:
4.1.1.2.1. a. Omission/Misuse of Tense Marker on Verb:
The government UdoU not care about agriculture …………… (Omission)٭ (10)
it Umean٭ (11) U income to him ……….………………………….... (Omission)
While they Uare studies U…………………………………........ (Misuse)٭ (12)
As the researcher mentioned earlier, that morpho-syntactic features have to be
checked in any syntactic projection, however the violation of these features appeared in
above sentences either in term of omission of tense marker or in term of misuse of tense
marker on main verb, so since the learners need to know the category feature (V) for verbs
from the view of their syntax and morphology, let us assume for this moment that the
37
feature V for verbs bear on small v dominated within vP, this small v bears uninterpretable
inflectional tense features, and furthermore these features get value from the tense feature
on T making what so called agreement relationship (Adger, 2002), and consequently the
above mentioned sentences mismatched this features on small v and T resulting
ungrammatical sentences. So the following tree diagrams will illustrate the grammatical
form for each.
the government do not care about agriculture٭ (10)
Let us assume that the noun (N) agriculture merged with preposition (P) about
forming prepositional phrase (PP) about agriculture, the resulting (PP) merged with the
verb (V) forming (VP) care about agriculture, the resulting (VP) merged with small v
which bears uninterpretable inflectional tense features forming small v-bar v′ care about
agriculture (v′), this v′ merged with noun phrase (NP) the government forming (vP), the
resulting (vP) in turn merged with negation particle not (NEG) forming (NEGP) not care
about agriculture, then the resulting (NEGP) merged with the head T which checks value
feature of verbal complex to form (T′) doesn’t care about agriculture, and the resulting T′
by universal grammar’s principles (EPP) that specifies all sentences to have subjects (Cook
& Newson, (1999)), T′ merged with (NP) the government forming the whole sentential
structure the government doesn’t care about agriculture as in the following figure:
38
However in (11) the accusative pronoun (PRN) him merged with (P) to to form (PP) to him,
the resulting (PP) merged with (N) income to form (NP) income to him, the resulting (NP)
in turn merged with (V) means to form (VP) means income to him, and this is then merged
with the head (T) to form (T′) that bears tense features as being simple present, this (T′)
because it has three different projections extended to its maximal projection and merged
with the specifier of (TP) to satisfy (EPP) forming (TP) it means income to him as in
structure bellow:
Figure 4.5
39
In (12) the researcher argued that this sentence violated morpho-syntactic features from
generative point of view in two aspects. One is relates to inflectional morphology that
requires all verbs to agree with their heads (T) or preceded auxiliaries to fulfill feature
checking on (T), and consequently the feature on T has to be checked with those in subject.
The second violation relates to semantic property of the verb (study) namely (thematic and
argument structure, (Ouhalla, 1999) that requires it to take at least two arguments to
complete its meaning, thus (12) the complement of the verb studying X merged with (V)
studying to form (VP) studying X, the resulting (VP) merged with the minimal projection
of (T) forming the intermediate projection of (T) in (T′), the resulting (T′) by the principle
of universal grammar (EPP) needs to extent to its maximal projection by merging with the
subject they to form (TP) they are studying x, and finally the resulting (TP) merged with
complement C (while) forming complementiser phrase CP while they are studying x, as in
the structure bellow:
Figure 4.6
40
From the structure above XP is the complement of the verb study that the students omitted,
in addition since the head T has the property of [+Progress: Tense] and [+plural: Number]
the inflected form of V should be studying rather than studies.
4.1.1.2.1.b. Omission /Misuse of Auxiliaries:
All these Uis makeU Sudan agricultural country ……. (Misuse)٭ (13)
Nowadays USudan dependingU on agriculture …….. (Omission)٭ (14)
Furthermore, the researcher argued that the sentences in (13-14) considered to be
ungrammatical, because the learners in both sentences used either miss form or omit
auxiliary, so since auxiliaries in English have different inflectional forms, it’s possible to
confirm that these inflectional forms due to morpho-syntactic features that have to be
checked in T, and accordingly, these features determine syntactic form of subject that takes
the position as the specifier of TP in the maximal projection of T. in addition the syntactic
Figure 4.7
41
relationship has to accommodate the agreement between subject and auxiliary. Thus (13)
will have the following grammatical structures:
The (N) country merged with (A) agricultural to form (AP) agricultural country, the
resulting (AP) merged with (N) Sudan to form (NP) Sudan agricultural country, the
resulting (NP) merged with (V) making to form (VP) making Sudan agricultural country,
the resulting (VP) merged with (T) are that bears [plural: Number, Progress: Tense]
feature of Spec or subject to form (T′) which is the intermediate projection of (T) are
making Sudan agricultural country, then the resulting (T′) by (EPP) needs to extend and
merge with Spec (subject) which itself constructed when the complement of the determiner
(D) these merged with (D) to (DP) these things, and the assumption that (N) things is the
complement of (D) these comes from the fact that this sentence relates to preceded phrase
or sentence, the resulting (DP) merged with quantifier (Q) all to form (QP) all these things
which is the Spec of TP, then (T′) finally merged with (QP) to form (TP) all these are
making Sudan agricultural country, as in the following figure:
42
It’s clear that the above structure shows the agreement feature between subject and
auxiliary that the learners failed to accommodate and used singular form of auxiliary rather
than plural which led to ungrammatical structure, thus the grammatical sentence will be
(13) all these are making Sudan agricultural country.
However in (14) the auxiliary is omitted (٭Nowadays Sudan depending on
agriculture). And to explain this, two tree diagrams will be used, the first one will show the
incorrect one and the second for the correct one, this to look at the different between them.
Now for the first one, let us assume that (N) agriculture merged with (P) on to form (PP)
on agriculture, the resulting (PP) merged with (V) depending to form (VP) depending on
agriculture, this (VP) merged with the subject and form S, ٭nowadays Sudan depending on
agriculture, as in the following figure:
Figure 4.8
43
The above structure considered to be ill syntactically, this is comes from the fact
that one of the principles in UG specifies that all sentences must be headed by (T) (Cook &
Newson, 1999), this (T) or auxiliary gives information about tense, number, and person.
And this information appeared to be absence in that structure. Thus the second structure
shows the correct form, nowadays Sudan is depending on agriculture
The issues in (13 & 14) considered to be pure inflectional issues. In particular, the
morphology of the auxiliary, in both 13 & 14 the issues of omission or misuse of auxiliary
Figure 4.9
Figure 4.10
44
appeared, so it’s plausible to say that second language learning needs more practice in
morphology and syntax of target language.
4.1.1.2.1. c. Misuse of Verb Form:
USome farmers growsU the seeds of marig٭ (15)
(16) That will Ureacting U on their study
Other issues were rose in this study, relate to the morphological and syntactic features of
verb that allow only well-formedness syntactic representation, and since it joins other
categories or lexical entries it has to accommodate morpho-syntactic relation with other
lexical entries within one syntactic projection that is to say the agreement features have to
be checked. Considering this as the base of verb morphology, the above sentences are to
violate morphological rules of verb form.
To make this violation clear let us construct and look at how this miss form of verb affect
on all the sentential structure.
45
It’s clear from the above structure that uninterpretable inflectional feature (uInfl) of (T)
doesn’t checked in (V) under (VP) resulting ungrammatical sentences. Now to construct the
correct form let us assume that the (N) marig merged with (P) of to form (PP) of marig, the
resulting (PP) merged with the lower (V′) to form another higher (V′), the lower (V′) itself
formed as the result of merging the (NP) which dominate (D) the and (N) seed with (V)
forming the lower (V′) grow the seeds , then the (PP) of marig merged with lower (V′) to
form higher (V′), the resulting (V′) rose up to (VP) by headedness projection principle
that specifies all phrases must have a head (Radford, 2004), the resulting (VP) merged with
(T) that bears tense feature and uninterpretable inflectional feature of (V) to form (T′), and
then the resulting (T′) merged with Spec (QP) that dominates (N) farmers and (Q) some, by
virtue of UG principle (EPP) to form (TP) as the following figure illustrates:
Figure 4.11
46
So the verb’s form (inflected or un-inflected) is determined by the morpho-syntactic
features dominated within the tense under T, in addition the number agreement within
subject, if there is no auxiliary used in the sentence, However, in case of the presence of
Aux definitely the features will be determined by Aux only because it has the power to
attract the verb to bear same features. Even though the users of the second language find
this to be problematic, and because their limit knowledge they confuse to choice either
finitive or infinitive form of verb during their performance. Thus they misused the verb in
(16) which seem to be strange sentence, this argument bases on the generative views of
English auxiliaries and modals that in some cases take only an infinitive form of verb as in
above, so if comes to the structure, the (N) study merged with (D) their to form (DP/NP)
their study, the resulting (NP) merged with (P) on to form (PP) on their study, furthermore
the resulting (PP) merged with infinitive form of V react to form (VP) react on their study,
the resulting (VP) merged with the head (T) to form (T′) will react on their study, and by
Figure 4.12
47
virtue of (EPP) T′ extended to its maximal projection and form (TP) that will react on their
study, as in the following:
4.1.1.3 Errors of Categorical Features:
Grammatical categories are the basic knowledge of grammar (Ouhalla, 1999), this
is because all syntactic representations build upon categories whether lexical of functional
categories, according to (Chomsky 1965, Radford 2004 & adger 2002), the learners should
know the features and position of each one of these categories within the syntactic
projection, for example the lexical category noun (N) in English’s syntax has the features
to takes the position after and before verb in deep structure (Chomsky, 1965) as well as
follows the determiner (D), and adjective (A) takes has the features of being preceded by
quantifier (Deg) and so on for the rest of categories. So as the researcher mentioned earlier
that the learners of second language feel worry from the proper use of these categories, thus
they committed several misuses of those category as explained in the following examples:
Figure 4.13
48
4.1.1.3. a. Misused of Prepositions:
People used to supply their seeds Uwith٭ (17) U ground water
we all depend UtoU agriculture٭ (18)
Agriculture depends UofU all populations٭ (19)
When you finish, UtoU example٭ (20)
Since the semantic properties of any preposition are needed in acquiring second language, it
seems obvious that the learners in above sentences did not successfully use the prepositions
(with, to, and of). So the proposed prepositions would be (by, on, on, and for) respectively.
4.1.1.3.b. Misuse of Adjectives:
agriculture is very UimportanceU٭ (21)
VeryU biggerU٭ (22)
Sudan is UbiggerU country in Africa٭ (23)
The researcher mentioned earlier that generative linguistics considered to be the principle
school of thought in linguistics because it attempts to explain language acquisition in term
of different aspects and linguistics operations, one of these operations, is the explanation of
the features of any category that lead us to determine well-formedness from ill-formedness,
for example the category (A) in English has the feature of being followed by Sepc such as
very, so, … and so on as well as has inflected comparative and superlative forms. However
using the Spec (Deg) very with inflected form, violate morpho-syntactic features and
consequently ungrammaticality appeared as in above (21 and 22), in addition the inflected
forms, comparative and superlative depend on the level of comparison, so to compare two
entities it takes the suffix (-er) whereas for superiority it takes (-est), thus the above (23)
considered to violate this. And accordingly the (21, 22, and 23) will have the grammatical
form as in the following:
49
(21) Agriculture is very important
(22) Very big
(23) Sudan is the biggest country in Africa
4.1.1.3. c. Misuse of Determiners:
UTheseU country٭ (24)
UTheseU day٭ (25)
A agriculture٭ (26)
To join any two words together we need to know all information about the features and
properties of each according to target language, these features and properties allow only
and only correct forms not else. Thus to use determiners with their complement we
normally need to indentify features of both in term of number, that is to say singular
determiners with singular complements and plural determiners with plural complements, in
addition phonological environment is important to be considered in particular with
indefinite articles, so accordingly, it’s obvious to say that the plural form of the nouns only
can complete (24 and 25) which are (countries, and days) respectively. Moreover with
regarding to phonological environment in (26) the only indefinite article (an) will be
suitable to specify the noun agriculture, thus the grammatical form for (24, 25, and 26) will
be as:
(24) These countries
(25) These days
(26) an agriculture
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4.1.1.4 Verbal Morphosyntax of Infinitive
Since generative syntax has considered the lexical word verb (V) as the important
part in any sentential structure, this because within the properties of this lexical word, the
learner will know what are the other parts of the sentence, based on what are called
thematic and argument structure of the verb (Chomsky, 1995). However the above
mentioned statement will be applicable only with finite verbs, but infinite verb has different
properties that do not allow any inflectional rules, and consequently, although these
properties of infinite verbs should acquired regardless first or second language, learners
always have faced problems due to these properties, thus the following examples illustrate
how second language learners failed in this recent study to deal with this properties:
People used to UsuppliesU their seeds٭ (27)
We need to Ueating٭ (28) U from agriculture
The assumption that these sentences are ungrammatical comes from the fact that infinitival
(to) has the feature to take only infinitive form of the verb and not inflected as the learners
used in above sentences, thus to use (to) with inflected form of verb due to
ungrammaticality, to make this clear here are some examples:
a. ٭they used to eating
b. ٭they used to ate
c. they used to eat
And accordingly, only infinitive verb will be used to form grammatical sentences (Adger,
2002) as in the following two trees which explain both structures:
51
(27a) Grammatical
(27b) Ungrammatical
From the above structures it’s clear that the features under T (to) in (27b) do not checked
and consequently forms ungrammatical sentence.
4.1.1.5 Projection Errors of TP
The term projection that has been used here, goes back to chomskyan generative syntax
(1957) when Chomsky published his book titled syntactic theory from the aspect theory of
syntax, in this book he proposed that, the sentential structure of any sentence in any
language builds up according to stages, so for meanwhile the researcher can say that
projection means stages of building up sentences, its starts from the minimum projection
(isolate lexicon), goes through intermediate projection T′ (T-bar) via syntactic and
morphological operations , and finally raises up to maximal projection in (TP) which is last
stage in sentence structure (Radford, 2009a, & 2009b). So for second language and even
Figure 4.14
Figure 4.15
52
first language learners, this projection issues seem to be problematic, because they do not
aware of rules in that target language, thus this analytic study revealed these issues from
two prospective:
b. Omission of subject
a. Double subjects
To explain these more precisely the following examples were taken as a part of their
writing.
4.1.1. a. Omission of Subject
Grow several crops in three seasons٭ (29)
From the above in (29) it’s evidence to say that this sentence violates morpho-syntactic
features from two perspectives, one is that, since EPP specifies all sentences to have
subjects, this sentence lacks of subject, another assumption is that, according to X′ theory
that specifies all sentences to be headed by TP, this sentence shows only (T′) and not (TP).
The following two figures illustrate both grammatical and ungrammatical forms:
53
Ungrammatical projection
Grow several crops in three seasons٭
Grammatical projection
They grow several crops in three seasons
b. Double Subject:
Students they are facing many problems٭ .30
The researcher argued that this sentence is ungrammatical, this comes from the assumption
that by EPP all sentence must have only one subject, otherwise subjects must co-ordinate to
construct grammatical sentences, so by using both students and they as the subject violates
this principle and accordingly ungrammatical. Thus the following two figures explain both
forms:
Figure 4.16
Figure 4.17
54
Ungrammatical (30a)
Grammatical (30b)
Aside from what the researcher has just mentioned, (30a) seems to violate binary
projection principle which specifies that any projection must follow up binary branches,
but (30a) has ternary braches. Moreover the inability of PRN (they) and NP (student) to co-
occur in the same position follows from the idea that they are both specifiers and categories
which occupy the Spec position of the TP. (Ouhalla, 1999).
Figure 4.18
Figure 4.19
55
4.2 Section two: The effect of lexical choice on sentential structure
Although the rules of any language allow only grammatical sentences, still there are
many users of languages utter ungrammatical sentences that seem to violate syntactic,
morphological, and semantic properties of lexical items, and to make this clear look at the
following sentences that produced by the learners in this study:
people used to Usupplies٭ .1 U their seeds UwithU ground water
Agriculture depends Uof Uall people٭ .2
Agriculture is very Uimportance٭ .3
UX growU several crops in three seasons ٭ .4
The example in (1) is considered to be ungrammatical as I mentioned in section one,
because the feature of infinitival (to) requires to select an infinitive verb. In addition, the
feature of the verb supply as used here requires selecting PP as its complement that
dominates only the preposition (by) and not (with). Whereas in example (2) the PP will be
the complement of V depend, this PP must dominate P (on) not (of) as used here.
Furthermore, in the example in (3) I argued that only infinitive adjective can complete the
Deg (very) which is important and not importance. And finally in (4) the omission of an
argument (NP) the subject affect the meaning from which the reader will not know who
grow several crops in three seasons.
Thus overall, the reasons for occurrence of all these sentences is something to do
with the properties of individual lexical items, for example why NP is required to be a
subject and not PP or any other phrase in (4), and consequently this will lead us to what so
call sub-categorization that specify the categorical class of lexical item and the environment
in which it can occur (Ouhalla, 1999). Hence we might say that, within any syntactic
56
projection there what so called selectional restrictions that allow only and only suitable
lexical item to fill certain position in the structure to form grammatical sentences, this
selectional restrictions involve two different component of grammar, one is concerns with
the structure which is syntactic component and other is concerns with the meaning that is
semantics. (Ouhalla, 1999), and since these component are complete each other in any
grammatical operations, it would be possible to confirm that lexical items are the base of
any syntactic projection.
So lexical choice has syntactic effect in term of structure if any lexical item does not select
appropriate position, in addition it affects the meaning of whole sentence or phrase and will
lead to ambiguity.
57
4.3 Factors behind morpho-syntactic issues
Different researchers have described different kinds of grammatical errors, in
particular morpho-syntactic errors, therefore it’s necessary to move further and attempt to
ask about the sources or factors of these erroneous in language acquisition, since errors in
second language acquisition seems to occur as the results of interference of first language,
sources of morpho-syntactic errors can be categorized into two domains:
4.3.1 Interlingual transfer:
The term interlingual used in different books to refer to the language transfer, (the
dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics, 1992) defined interlingual errors as
the errors that result from the transfer of first language into second language, (Richard,
1971) considered interlingual transfer as the negative transfer of L1 to L2, this transfer
may occur in different level such as transfer of morphology, syntax, lexicon, etc. according
to (Brown, 1994) there are two sub-categorization of interlingual transfer, (1) direct
translation, (2) and the used of negative words, in this study many issues appeared to be
interlingual transfer such as: Omission of auxiliary in ( 13 and 14) this simply because their
first language does make use of auxiliary thus they confused the proper auxiliary or omitted
as in the examples (13, 14)
All these Uis٭ .(13) U making Sudan agricultural country
Nowadays, USudan depending٭ .(14) U on agriculture
Another error to consider here as interlingual transfer will be the errors of infinitive verbal
morpho-syntax from which the learners found difficulties to deal with it, in particular when
they used finite form with infinitival particle (to), this because their first language allows
such structure. Thus they used inflected form of verb in (27, 28) as follows:
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people used to Usupplies ٭ .(27) U their seeds
we need to UeatingU from agriculture٭ .(28)
The learners in these two sentences just translated the sentences from their first language to
second language.
4.3.2 Intralingual interfere:
Intralingual interfere used to refer to the issues that results from the learners’ attempt and
use the target language in a very simple way, (Richard, 1971) stated that these kinds of
errors due to main four reasons, (1) overgeneralization, (2) ignorance of rules, (3)
incomplete application of rules, (4) and false concepts hypothesized, these issues appeared
in the study in terms of the following sub-branches, such as:
Tense agreement
Misuse of adjectives
Misuse of determiners
Misuse of preposition …etc.
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4.4 Summary
In this chapter the researcher has provided precise results for the morpho-syntactic
errors, justified the ungrammatical forms, mentioned the possible factors behind these
errors, and established how lexical choice affects the sentential structure.
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CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.0 Introduction
This chapter presents summary for the results of this study corresponding to research
questions. It discusses the findings of the study that relate to morpho-syntactic errors, it
provides conclusion, and finally suggests some recommendations for future researchers.
5.1 Summary of Results According to Research Questions
5.1.1 Research Question 1: what are the morpho-syntactic errors in these narrative
essays?
Results: regarding the above mentioned question, the results of this study revealed five
main errors to be considered as morpho-syntactic, each one of these five errors sub-divided
into sub-categories as in the following:
1. Errors of agreement features that consists of
1. Subject-verb agreement
I. Number agreement
II. Person agreement
2. Tense agreement
1. Omission/misuse of inflectional morphology this consists of
I. Omission/misuse of tense marker on verb
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II. Omission/misuse of auxiliary
III. Misuse of verb form
3. Omission of categorical features which consists of
I. Misuse of prepositions
II. Misuse of adjectives
III. Misuse of determiners
4. Verbal morphosyntax of infinitive
5. Projection issues of TP that consists of
I. Omission of subject
II. Double subject
5.1.2 Research Question 2: why these errors considered as errors?
Results: since the grammatical rules of any language allow only and only well-formedness
structure, the results of this study found the morphology, syntax, and semantics are
integrated units of any projection that should not be decomposed, because each one
complete another in the structure, and consequently once they decomposed
ungrammaticality or ambiguity appears in the structure as mentioned in chapter four section
two.
5.1.3 Research Question 3: how lexical choice affects the sentential structure?
Results: according to this question the results revealed that lexical items have effect in any
sentential structure in terms of syntax wherein the word order is not on random base;
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moreover lexical items have effect on the meaning of the structure wherein the semantic of
the sentences is determined by lexical items, and thus it affects the structural refining.
In addition, the results showed that; the interface is the most blocks that stands as
factor or source of morhpo-syntactic errors in terms of two different kinds of transfer,
interlingual transfer from which the learners attempt to apply the rules of their first
language in second language, and intralingual interfere from which the learners just try to
learn second language as very simple as possible.
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5.2 Discussion
5.2.1 Morpho-syntactic Errors and Factors Behind Them
The 5 major morpho-syntactic errors which were found in this study considered to be
similar to those of (Abe 2007, Harganto 2007, Pongsiriwet 2001, and Hamin & Mustafa
2010) in different reviewed literatures in chapter two from which different researchers
tried to investigate these morpho-syntactic errors but separately, such as subject-verb
agreement, misuse of prepositions and so on, so by examining these morpho-syntactic
errors as one study makes the study important and distinct from cited literatures in chapter
two. Furthermore, since the similarity in the results is consistent it would possible to
confirm the priority intensive attention to ESL learners and encourage them to practice
more and more in order to be familiar with second language’s rules.
With regard to morpho-syntactic errors found in this study, interlingual transfer was
considered to have more effect due to these errors, this appeared clear in the errors relate to
inflectional morphology from which they attempted to apply their first language’ rules
(Arabic language) or just translated the idea, although two languages are totally different in
the way they employ the morpho-syntactic rules.
5.3 Conclusion
This study has presented morhpo-syntactic errors analysis of essays written by Sudanese
university students, the study revealed 5 errors categories found in the students essays,
including errors in (1) agreement features that consist of subject-verb agreement in number
and person, (2) tense agreement that appeared in inflectional morphology as misuse or
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omission. This consists of omission/misuse of tense marker on verb, omission/misuse of
auxiliary, and misuse of verb form. In addition (3) errors of categorical features were found
which consist of misuse of prepositions, adjectives, and determiners. Furthermore, errors in
(4) verbal morpho-syntax appeared in particular infinitive verb, and finally (5) projection
errors of TP took place which consists of omission of subject and double subject.
With regard to factors behind these errors, the study found that interlingual and intalingual
transfer to be sources of these issues. In addition the study tried to establish the effect of
lexical choice on the sentential structure and found that this effect represented in two
different component, syntax and semantics as well.
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Recommendations for Future Research
1. As this study investigated morpho-syntactic errors of ESL learners essays, future
researchers may investigate these errors in different language skills such as speaking and
try to find out whether the results are consistent similar or not.
2. As simple samples of written essays were used in these study the results may not be
generalized, so further research may include large samples and try to compare the results.